Film Review: Entre Les Bras is French food fundamental — 3 stars

Twelve years ago, director Paul Lacoste was filming a television documentary series on the chefs of France. The three-Michelin starred chef Michel Bras was the first of his subjects. But the one who intrigued Lacoste most, and in this documentary, is Sébastien Bras, the chef’s son. Entre les bras shadows them both over a season in the life of the world-renowned restaurants they own in the Aubrac region and in Toya, Japan.

The pun of the original French title refers to many elements of the documentary: the fate of the famous restaurants in the interregnum of the changeover; being in one’s arms and embrace both literally and figuratively; and what — be it affection, respect or competitiveness — stands between the men who share the surname.

Unlike Guy Fieri or Gordon Ramsay, the Bras boys have no easily copied shtick, no catchphrases — just a signature dish and a side of diffidence. In the largely reticent world of the French Michelin-starred restaurant, the mystique of the chef-as-artist theme persists. It’s all that smearing of colourful pastes like paints on a canvas that they do, and in the Bras’ case its their grandiose white porcelain dishes that resemble the cracked piece of a giant pterodactyl egg.

In the film’s opening credits the father-son pair assemble a bowl of le gargouillou, the restaurant’s famous young vegetable salad. The plate fills the frame and the chefs take turns calling out its lengthy list of ingredients as each falls into place: sesame powder, cucumber, sorrel, celeriac leaf, a tomato picked this morning. Make no mistake, it is a painting, with precise dabs of sauce, oil and purée chosen as much for their beauty as their taste on the palate.

A double protagonist is tough to pull off, though, and Lacoste wisely chooses to focus on Sébastien, waiting and observing as he steps out from behind the creative shadow of his father. There is respect — he inherited a complex body of work, after all — but how he reconciles that oeuvre with his own talent becomes the film’s key tension.

There is no doubt that Michel will hand over his restaurant at the end of the season, as his mother did before him with her own. But while any narrative tension there might have been is relatively slack, what remains is fascinating and intimate. In some of the home movie-style footage of the several Bras generations, there are glimpses of the father as both ally and obstacle.

“I can be mean,” Michel admits, after interrupting Seb and instructing the new waiters in how the dining room is run (ie. no chit chat and the wait staff are to skip the unwelcome linguistic and ornamental flourishes of dish explanation, and leave the poetry to the kitchen).

Winter finds the chefs in their restaurant’s Japanese counterpart at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaïdo. Similar to their plateau perch in Laguiole, it has floor-to-ceiling windows, which offer Lacoste another glimpse of the team shoulder to shoulder at the viewing spot — Bras père likes standing there in the morning, as the boats come in, while Bras fils prefers the sunset. The Toya restaurant is also, like Sébastien, the twin of its father: it wants to tweak things its own way, to reflect its personality and flavour.

Developing a potential signature dish, Seb wordlessly demonstrates how to curdle cream and drapes the delicate skin, unbroken, over chopsticks, painstakingly making rice paste from scratch, while his father observes at a safe distance. Under the unflattering work light of the kitchen, in their short-sleeves smock shirts they could be surgeons — or priests.